When there's no defending a white Chicago police officer charged with murdering black teenager Laquan McDonald, Fox News finds other ways to make the story about Blacks Behaving Badly.

In its coverage of the protests in Chicago that erupted yesterday after officer Jason Van Dyke was charged and a police video showing McDonald being shot 16 times was released, even Sean Hannity had to admit the shooting seemed indefensible.

So Hannity and reporter Mike Tobin used “black-on-black crime” to feign concern for black lives – while really using the subject as a weapon against #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

First, Tobin just happened to bring up the subject while he was covering the Chicago protests. Protester Brendan Glover told Tobin he thought the charging of Van Dyke was an effort to appease the community because a judge had ordered the dashcam video of the shooting released. “If that tape hadn’t come out, they still wouldn’t have charged him,” Glover added.

That's an important aspect to why the community is fired up. But instead of elaborating on that point or even probing it, “objective reporter” Tobin changed the subject to Fox’s (and Donald Trump’s) black-crime obsession.

TOBIN: Earlier this month, Tyshawn Lee was shot point blank. The autopsy showed he had powder burns on his head. The nine-year-old was lured into an alley and assassinated. Why no demonstrations then?

Why on earth bring up a completely unconnected matter and suggest a connection? Unless you're trying to suggest that African Americans only want to demonstrate to get whitey and give themselves a pass on their own bad behavior?

Glover told Tobin they didn’t have the facts about the Lee case but they had video for the McDonald case.

Hannity interrupted to change the subject again, this time to use black victims of black crime as a vehicle to trap Glover into looking like a racial hypocrite. Fortunately, Glover – who was probably unaware of Hannity’sheinousrecord on race – gave an answer that even Hannity had to admit was a good point.

HANNITY: I want to ask him. There have been 818 murders in Chicago from 2014 through November 2015. We’ve had 4,224 people shot, shooting incidents in Chicago in that time frame. Ask him if he can name one person who was shot or one person who was killed.

TOBIN: Well, someone in New York, Sean Hannity, is asking, of all the people who have been gunned down in the streets of Chicago, gang violence, black on black violence, other than Tyshawn Lee, can you name anyone?

BRENDAN GLOVER (PROTESTER): I go by basically what I see on the news. The most disturbing thing I’ve seen this summer was the Tyshawn Lee situation. For that to be a child and for somebody to do that is very disturbing. This situation strikes home to me with Laquan because that could have been me, my little brother, one of my friends. And the fact that we don’t feel safe with the police around, they’re here to serve and protect. And the fact that I don’t feel safe around police, it’s disturbing.

TOBIN: Essentially the question he’s getting to is why is there not the outrage when there’s black on black violence?

GLOVER: Because crime is going to happen, wherever you go. Crime happens. And the people that are here to serve and protect are a part of that problem. So it becomes a problem when you can’t even call 911 and feel like you’re safe to protect you from people that are committing crimes. That’s the point I’m try to make.

TOBIN: Thank you. I thank you for making the point. That’s one of the distinctions we’ve heard from people like Mr. Glover here is there’s a difference when you have someone who is paid by your taxes to protect and serve and that person is out there charged now for doing something quite heinous, Sean.

Hannity acknowledged, almost grudgingly, “That’s a good distinction. I’ll say that.” Then he continued, “But the 9 year-old case of Tyshawn Lee is a great example that you bring up, Mike Tobin.”

I guarantee that Hannity will “forget” that "good distinction" the next time he covers a #BlackLivesMatter demonstration.

Watch the phony-baloney concern for black lives below, from the November 24 Hannity, via Media Matters.

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It sounds like Mike James has not actually watched this segment or even read what the protestor was actually saying.

Frankly, it’s strange to hear someone thinking that anyone would say that violent crime is caused by people being afraid of calling the police. That’s a nonsensical statement, and it would seem to line up with the same strange worldview that would start ideas like “Black Lives Don’t Matter”.

Obviously, the protestor’s view is that there’s a problem when communities don’t feel safe calling the police. Meaning that they not only are victimized by crime but by the police as well. This really isn’t that hard to understand. But most likely Mike James already knows this.

So the point being made here, expressed or implied, is that black on black violent crime is caused because blacks are afraid to call 911 because they think they won’t get a fair shake from white cops? Sorry but that is a stretch.

Hannity could care less about whether black men are killed by police or by other black men. He just doesn’t want to hear the protests. The attempted “gotcha” of demanding that every protestor immediately be able to cite crime blotter statistics for unrelated crimes is a particularly unsavory one.

If I understand Hannity’s attempted game here, the idea is that you can’t object to police killings unless you also can itemize all the other statistics about killings. Which is nonsense. The point about police killings, as the protestor here noted, is that we all know that criminals kill people every day in every major city. We depend on the police to protect us, not to add more misery to the situation.

This is the same kind of false dichotomy as we’ve seen with the nonsense about “All Lives Matter”. Which is a complete misnomer. We could actually refer to that notion for what it really is: “Black Lives Don’t Matter”. And I really wish that when right wingers try that idiocy, someone would call them on it. Because they don’t care about “All Lives” – they just don’t want to hear about “Black Lives”.

I remember hearing a few years ago about how most of America was suffering from “compassion fatigue”. This was a right wing meme intended to attack left wing notions of addressing racial and economic injustices. (Idea being that we’re tired of being “politically correct”) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting came up with a great simple answer to that nonsense. They said that some of America may well be suffering from “compassion fatigue” from the last few years of discussions – but that a lot more of America has been suffering from “racism fatigue”, and that problem’s been going on for centuries.